


Romantic

by emilyenrose



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 16:06:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15123032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyenrose/pseuds/emilyenrose
Summary: "So," says Rin. "I guess this is it, then."





	Romantic

"So," says Rin. "I guess this is it, then."

"Yeah," Haru says. They're sitting on the edge of the Iwatobi Returns pool, feet dangling in the water. There are still a few of the guys around, though most of the Samezuka guys are gone now. Sousuke ducked out half an hour ago, giving Rin a shoulder-grasp and a serious nod as he went, which Rin understood just fine. Rei and Nagisa are clearing up the balloons still in the water – well, Rei's clearing up, and Nagisa is splashing around him shouting excitedly. Makoto's around somewhere, and Gou's gone to get changed – she did, eventually, get in the water, though only to doggy-paddle in the shallow end. Momo and Mikoshiba made matching screeching noises when they saw. Rin was genuinely worried Momo was gonna get a nosebleed.

Now he kicks against the wall and watches the splashes settle. Oh, there's Nitori, gone to help Rei wrangling Nagisa.

This was a good party.

"Thanks for the race," Rin says. "It was, you know. Really good."

"You said it was what you wanted," says Haru to the pool.

Rin can't help grinning. Trust Haru. "Yeah, it was," he says. "You and me in the water, it's everything."

"Yeah," says Haru, even quieter, still not looking at him.

"You better keep training," says Rin. "This time when I come back you're gonna be in shape, okay? Not like before."

"Not like before," Haru agrees.

"I  _mean_ it, Haru."

"I'll be ready," Haru snaps. " _You'd_ better be ready."

Rin hides a laugh in his hand. He's not laughing  _at_ Haru. He just feels really good right now. "Yeah," he says. "You better believe I will."

"Okay," says Haru. "Fine."

"Are you ready to go, Haru?" says Makoto behind them. They both turn. Makoto gives Rin an apologetic smile. "Sorry."

Rin smiles back at him. "Thanks for this," he says. "It means a lot."

"We're going to miss you," says Makoto. "All of us."

Haru gets up in the abrupt way he has when he has to tear himself away from the water and hates it. His feet and calves are wet. "You should walk back with us," he says.

"I kind of have to get home, Haru," says Rin. Haru and Makoto live in the opposite direction from his family's place.

Haru makes a face. "You can sleep on a futon," he says, vaguely aggressive.

"Ah, Haru –" says Makoto.

Rin laughs. "Oh, is that an invitation? Are we having a sleepover?"

Haru turns away. "No."

Rin looks at Makoto's awkward expression, and looks at the stiff back of Haru's neck, and wonders why it is that none of the Iwatobi guys have the balls to just  _say_ things. "Shame," he says, getting to his feet, slinging his arm around Haru's shoulders just to feel him twitch and go still. "When I was in elementary school I would have loved a sleepover with you guys. Maybe I've been regretting missing out for years and years. You shouldn't get my hopes up like that, Haru."

"Just do it if you want to," says Haru sharply, which would have more effect if he wasn't slightly pink and glaring at Rin's armpit.

"Maybe I will," says Rin. He's all packed, and his flight's not till tomorrow evening. "Let me tell Gou."

 

Walking along the shore with Haru and Makoto Rin feels good,  _really_ good. He's doing most of the talking but that's typical with these guys. Haru's Haru, but Makoto's actually a pretty quiet guy as well. Rin talks swimming, Australia, city life, the future, bouncing it off Makoto's smiles and soft comments and Haru's slight head tilts of interest. He remembers the night before he went to Australia in middle school, the excitement that had been most of the way to queasy nervousness bubbling inside him. He doesn't feel like that now. There's a solid core of confidence in him that isn't afraid of anything. He's gonna rock this. He's going to train in Australia, where he won't be the fastest guy in the pool: he's going to train against people who are better than him and he's going to  _get_ better until he's better than them. And when he gets back Haru had better watch out. Haru and then the  _world_ had better watch out for Rin.

Halfway down the beach Rin's so full of sizzle and satisfaction he has to leave the other two behind and jog down to the tideline to get his feet wet again. His sneakers are soaked, but what the hell. He'll put them in a bag and chuck it in his suitcase – take a bit of Iwatobi seawater with him when he goes. The ocean is Haru's swimming pool all summer. The ocean will keep them connected, even when Rin's miles and miles away.

He grins at himself. Now  _that's_ romantic. Maybe he'll remind Haru about it.

Or maybe not. Who knows what that guy would say.

The others catch him up, and the waves wash over all their feet. Makoto takes his shoes off, Haru refuses to even when Makoto says he'll get a cold, and Rin knows damn well that Haru's not because he's not and sees in Makoto's wry look and little grin that he know it too. Oh man, these guys, his guys. It's crazy that Rin made friends this good on the strength of less than six months all those years ago. It's lucky. Rin's crazy lucky.

They make it to Haru's place and end up sprawled on the floor pretending to drink barley tea and really just talking. They're not even talking about anything anymore: it's only good to be together. By the end Makoto's got his eyes closed when he speaks. Haru's yawning and pretending he's not. Rin feels wide awake, but he knows this energy, live-wire punchy  _people_ energy. He'll be asleep the moment he actually lies down, which is why he's the only one still sitting up.

Finally Haru yawns mid-sentence, and then looks vaguely put out when he can't remember what he was saying. Rin cracks and just laughs and laughs for nearly two minutes – every time he  _stops_ he remembers Haru's  _face,_ the way his nose wrinkled up – oh man. When he finally wipes his eyes and pants an insincere apology, Makoto looks up at him and then glances at Haru and smiles one of his hard-to-read little smiles that only Haru ever really seems to understand and says, "Well, I'm going."

"What? Hey!" Rin protests. "What about our sleepover?"

"I like my bed," says Makoto cheerfully, like anything Rin says is just going to be water rolling off his back.

Haru says, " _Makoto_."

"Sleep well, guys! Good night! Travel safe tomorrow, Rin!" says Makoto quickly and then he's somehow out of the door before Rin can say  _wait, what?_

"Wait, what?" he says to Haru.

Haru says, "I'll set up the futon."

 

So now they're in Haru's room, because Haru is committing to this elementary school sleepover thing – probably because Rin said he wanted it. Haru always takes things like that literally. Rin's pretty sure that Haru's parents' room is basically a spare room, but he decides not to mention it. He hasn't got a problem sharing space with Haru.

"At least we don't have to share the bed this time, huh?" he jokes.

"It's not big enough," says Haru.

Rin decides he's not going to touch that one. There is literally nothing he could say that wouldn't end up with Rin embarrassing himself anyway. Haru still sleeps in his childhood single, and he's right, it's not big enough. It might not even be big enough for Rin by himself. Rin doesn't think of himself as a big guy, because he's spent all year rooming with Sousuke who is – as Australians say – built like a brick shithouse _._ But Rin's feet might actually hang off the end of Haru's bed. The only way they'd  _both_ fit was if Rin was spooning him, properly curled around him, his knees tucked behind Haru's, his arm over Haru's waist.

Rin bites his lip and hopes he's not turned pink and wrenches his thoughts onto another track. He jumps up and prowls around Haru's room looking at stuff while Haru is solemnly unfolding blankets. Haru's got the photo of their long-ago relay in a cheap frame on a bookshelf. Rin picks it up and looks at it. "Wow, look at us," he says. "You look exactly the same, Haru."

This is a flat-out lie, because kid Haru is cute but not _perfect_ the way the eighteen-year-old version is – like some water-god somewhere went  _okay our concept here is still clear ocean eyes, but also we're going to add serious swimmer body_. But it's also the complete truth, because Haru in the photo is being grabbed by kid Rin and is doing the exact same face he does when Rin grabs him now. Rin grins at it, and then he feels his own face going soft as he looks at the four of them in the picture. It  _means_ something that Haru keeps the photo where he can see it. Haru's not the romantic type; Haru doesn't go in for symbols. But he keeps this.

Oh. Oh, Rin's welling up.

Oh well. It's nearly two in the morning, he's tired, it's been an emotional couple of days. He wipes his face.

"Don't cry," says Haru, a faint lilt of concern in his voice. When Rin looks up he's standing awkwardly a couple of feet away, hands at his sides. The futon is perfectly made, sheets hotel-crisp.

Rin smiles at him and wipes another couple of tears away. "It's not bad crying, Haru," he says. "Don't worry."

Haru looks away.

Okay, time to move past  _this_ moment. Rin sets the photo back where he found it and something shoved between two books behind it catches his eye. "Hey, what's this?" he says, pulling out the – it's an envelope. Rin knew as soon as he saw the familiar air mail border. He stares down at his own handwriting, the slow careful shapes of his middle-school English in the top line of the return address. Rin's English writing these days is a scrawl. "Where did you get this?" he says.

"Yamazaki," says Haru, like that's enough explanation.

"Obviously you got it from Sousuke, it's addressed to Sousuke, why is Sousuke giving you my old letters?" demands Rin. What the  _hell_ , Sousuke. Rin doesn’t like to think about the fact that there's a written record of his middle-school nervous breakdown – a hideous week by week slow-motion replay – but at least it was Sousuke who had it. Rin _trusts_ Sousuke with that shit. He doesn't want it getting handed round to whoever.

To  _Haru._

Who isn't saying anything.

"Haru, why have you got this?" Rin says. "Did you read it?" When there's no answer – well, that's the answer, isn't it. Rin is suddenly furious. "I'm taking it," he says.

" _No_ ," says Haru.

Suddenly he's right up in Rin's space and snatching the letter out of Rin's hand. At least, he's trying to. But Rin's reflexes are as whistle-sharp as Haru's, so he pulls away and Haru only catches the edge of the envelope. He tugs, Rin pulls it back, it starts to tear –

Haru lets go.

"What's your  _problem?"_ says Rin. Haru's staring at him like Rin just bit a baby dolphin in half in front of him. "Don't read other people's letters, jeez. When did Sousuke even give this to you? At a joint practice?" Rin's finding it kind of hard to picture – all Sousuke and Haru usually do at joint practice is switch off glaring and pretending to ignore each other, like unfriendly cats forced to share territory. When would they have a moment to secretly hand off Rin's old letters? Rin is trying hard to ignore the twist of betrayal in his chest as he thinks about it.

"At a tournament," Haru says. His eyes are on the letter.

" _What_ tournament?"

"In middle school," Haru says.

Rin blinks.

He looks at the envelope in his hand for a moment. Haru watches him warily. Rin takes the letter out of the envelope and unfolds it. It's two sheets of cheap school paper, softened by time. The folds from being tucked into the envelope have set deeply, like it's been unfolded and refolded often, always carefully in the same place. There are little crumples and smudges at the margins – the marks of small fingers.

Rin reads the opening two sentences and feels himself going red. It's  _this_ letter. He remembers writing this, in a way he doesn't remember writing most of his letters to Sousuke. He remembers losing his nerve and digging in his pencil case for an eraser so he could rub out  _you_ and put  _Haru_ instead. Then he'd sent it to Sousuke because he'd gone to all the trouble of writing it so he had to send it  _somewhere._

The betrayed twist in Rin's chest eases into something a bit more rueful as he puts the letter down on the desk. Of course Sousuke just gave it to Haru. Rin wouldn't be dumb enough now to send Sousuke a letter that was clearly meant for someone else.

He looks up and Haru's still staring at him all wide-eyed and distressed. Haru in distress isn't usually all that dramatic, but just now possibly even someone who didn't know him could tell he's having an emotion. Rin's hit by a wave of dumb affection. God, Haru. Rin's so fucking soft for him, it's awful.

"So Sousuke gave you that one, huh," he says.

Haru turns his face away. "He said it was for me," he mutters.

"Yeah, yeah," says Rin. "I guess it was. But I knew you wouldn't write back, so what was the point, right?"

"Yamazaki said that too," says Haru.

Rin swallows a laugh. If he knows Sousuke, the guy said something like,  _Rin knows you'd definitely never write back to him_  and meant it to give Haru a good competitive stab so he'd write at once. Wouldn't that have been something, getting a letter from  _Haru_ out of nowhere. If the rest of Rin's history with Haru is anything to go by, it would probably have changed everything in some inexplicable beautiful way. Sousuke's always been, in his own ass-backwards way, a friend in a million.

"I guess he was worried about me," he says with a shrug. He picks the letter up again and folds it. He's very aware of the way Haru is staring worriedly at his hands, like Rin might start tearing things again at any moment. "Here," he says, when it's tucked safely back into the envelope. "Since it was for you, it's fine."

He holds the letter out. Haru takes it quickly. His thumb almost-but-not-quite brushes Rin's index finger.

"Looks like you read it a lot, huh?" Rin says.

"Not really," says Haru, which Rin takes as  _yes_. "Not after," Haru adds.

After – oh. After the race that Haru won.

Rin looks away. "Right," he says.

"When you went to Australia," says Haru, "I didn't want you to go."

"I – Haru?" says Rin, and he has to look back at Haru's face because  _what_. Where did that come from?

Haru is staring at him very intently. His eyes are bright in the low light from the bedside lamp.

"Rin, I didn't want you to go," he says. "I was lonely without you. I missed you." Rin knows he's gaping. "When you weren't there, I thought about you all the time," Haru says, and he has  _no idea,_ he  _has_ to have no idea what he sounds like. "I always thought about you," Haru says - and who the hell taught Haru  _eye contact,_ it's  _devastating_. "So I kept your letter. Even though I couldn't read it anymore."

"Wow," says Rin faintly, and then he has to sit down. At least the futon's right there. Haru stands over him still holding that stupid airmail envelope and still looking at him with those big eyes. "Haru, I – listen, you – Haru,  _come_   _here_ ," Rin says, and Haru looks faintly confused but folds down onto his knees next to Rin.

Rin grabs him, both arms around his shoulders, and squeezes as tight as he can. After a moment Haru gets the idea and hugs him back. "I missed you too," Rin says. "Haru, I missed you a lot. I'll miss you a lot this time as well."

He feels Haru's grip on him tighten. It's after two in the morning and they really need to sleep and instead Rin's started crying a little again because Haru kept his dumb middle school letter for years. Well, he's about to live the jet lag life for a while anyway, and this important. They keep hugging for a while. It doesn't get awkward. It seems like it  _should_ , but it's Haru, who has no idea what normal is, so it doesn't.

At last Haru sighs and pulls away and says, "You need to go."

"I do," says Rin. "But it's okay that you don't want me to go, Haru. It's really okay." God, it's more than okay.

"I  _do_ want you to go," Haru says.

"Yeah," says Rin. "I know." Haru yelled it at him yesterday. "But you'll miss me."

Haru nods slightly.

"I'll write," says Rin. "Even though you won't write back."

"Maybe I will," says Haru, frowning. "I can write letters if I want."

"I'll believe it when I see it," says Rin. "I bet you write shitty letters anyway."

Haru's frown deepens, and he gives Rin a sidelong irritated look. "You should sleep," he says.

Rin grins. "Whatever you say," he says. He sprawls on the futon – it's really comfortable, actually – while Haru turns off the light and gets into bed and wraps himself in the blanket curled up on his side. So he always sleeps like that, not just when he's stuck in a hotel room in Australia with Rin. Some part of Rin thinks that's good to know.

Haru's going to be in Australia again if Rin has anything to say about it. Plane tickets aren't that expensive if you plan it in advance. Whatever happens it's not going to be four years of lonely silence this time. They're going to miss each other, but they're going to  _see_  each other, and in their future they're going to swim together – against each other, with each other, it doesn't matter:  _together_.

Rin's closed his eyes and is just on the verge of falling into what he can tell is going to be the best kind of deep happy sleep when Haru speaks again.

"When you come back," he says into the shadowed room, "you can kiss me."

The silence stretches.

 _"What_ ," says Rin.

"If you still want to," Haru says.

Rin says faintly, "Are you being serious right now?"

Haru is aggressively quiet, like that doesn't even deserve an answer.

"Who says I –"  _want to_ , Rin doesn't finish, because that's hopeless, obviously he wants to. It must be obvious if even Haru knows. Wait, is  _that_ why Makoto left them alone? His heart is pounding suddenly. Is that why Haru asked him to come here?

"Why can't I kiss you now?" he demands. It comes out sounding annoyed, which is good, because Rin was aiming for anything except overwhelmed.

"When you come back," Haru says again. "We'll race first."

" _What?_ What kind of order is that, Haru?"

"It's romantic," says Haru decisively, like he's thought about it. "You'll like it better."

Rin puts his hands over his face. It  _is_ romantic. Haru's  _right_. Haru really has thought about this. When Haru said he always thought about Rin, he wasn't being oblivious. It really was what it sounded like. And Rin didn't get it.  _Rin's_ the oblivious one.

"Fine," he snaps, when he thinks he can say it without his voice cracking. "When I come back."

"Good," Haru says, and there's a rustle from the bed, like he's just going to roll over and go to sleep now that's been dealt with.

Rin grinds his teeth together. He gathers his courage and forces himself to scramble up and crawl onto Haru's tiny bed. He puts his arm around Haru's waist and tucks his knees behind Haru's knees and puts his face against Haru's hair. He was right, they can both fit this way. Only just, but they can. Haru is motionless in Rin's arms but he doesn't stiffen or pull away. After a moment he shifts a little so that they can both put their heads on Haru's pillow. The movement presses his back ever so slightly closer to Rin's chest. He's warm.

"Share your blanket too," Rin mutters.

Haru does. Rin can smell the chlorine in his hair. He squeezes Haru's waist a little tighter. He puts his mouth against the nape of Haru's neck. He feels Haru shiver. Rin's heart is still going thump-thump-thump, and he sets his teeth into the soft skin of Haru's neck just a little bit. He can't believe he's allowed.

"When I come back," he says, right into Haru's skin.

Haru shivers again and says, annoyed, "So stop that."

"Huh? That wasn't a kiss, it didn't count."

"It counts."

"No it doesn't."

"Does."

Rin does it again, breath and teeth to the back of Haru's neck, because he can. "Doesn't," he murmurs, feeling almost the happiest he can remember.

Haru probably tries to argue, but Rin's asleep before he hears.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr [here](http://emilyenrose.tumblr.com).


End file.
